In introducing the nation to her new running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris gave a rundown of his jobs and accomplishments. But one story, buried in that list, stood out as a reflection of the deepest promise of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
It goes like this. It’s the 1990s. Walz is still in his pre-politician days. He’s a teacher. And a coach. A football coach, in fact. And when a gay student asks him, in those still quite prejudiced days, to be the faculty sponsor for the first gay-straight alliance at the school, Walz comes to an insight worth dwelling on. He realizes that, of all the faculty at the school, there will be special power in a football coach embracing the cause.
And so he says yes.
The story stuck with us, because sometimes it doesn’t just matter what is being stood up for but also who is standing up for it.
Sure, the French teacher or the theater teacher or the longstanding lesbian on faculty in that kind of situation can serve as faculty advisor. But in this case, it mattered that a football coach might do it. It robbed certain hatreds of their power, and suggested new possibilities.
This story, it would seem, is a helpful window into the promise of a Walz candidacy and vice presidency.
Walz is an unusual figure on a Democratic Party ticket: the first non-lawyer on a Democratic presidential ticket since Jimmy Carter, the son of a farm family, a public school graduate with a fancy-school-free résumé, a longtime teacher and coach, an Army reserve soldier — all in all, a truly working-class, regular-guy, non-coastal-elite vice presidential nominee that Republicans simply cannot dismiss as the Other.
And he is, as he lightheartedly described himself at a rally in Philadelphia last night, an old white guy. But what makes him especially interesting as an old white guy is that he seems determined to use who he is to stand up for others, and, as he did with that school club, to be an exemplar of Old White Guys for Multiracial Democracy.
The far right often tries to tarnish Democrats as a bunch of effete coastal folk trying to ruin sports, take away your guns, unravel traditional understandings of gender, replace white people, usher in communism, and more. It is vital that everyone stand up to this bullshit. But there can be special power in an old white guy saying: This is bullshit. A guy who hunts and keeps guns. A guy who coached football. A guy who fought in the military. A guy who did all the supposed “guy” things and emerged with a belief in equality and dignity for all of us.
As Liz Plank told us the other day, the dangerous outreach to adrift men being conducted by the far right cannot be countered by messages that ignore adrift masculinity or that demean the ways in which many men see themselves. Rather, Plank argues, men need to be given a way of seeing how traditionally masculine virtues they might subscribe to, such as protection and provision, for example, can be applied in a modern context to make them champions of the rights and power of all. Walz is that kind of figure, someone who might show lost and confused men that you can be a dude and a mensch.
To compete with those who are offering fascist solutions to men despairing about their place in the future, Democrats need to have not just a message but also a messenger. And Walz is well equipped to call in those who feel like they haven’t had a home in the Democratic Party for a long time, like the white-working-class folks in Appalachia we spoke with Arlie Hochschild about just a couple of weeks ago.
Walz is also a white American guy who seems to delight in playing hype man to a pioneering woman of color. As he put it during the White Dudes for Harris call,
How often in 100 days do you get to do something that’s going to impact generations to come? And how often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterwards and know that a Black woman kicked his ass?
Walz has a habit of speaking of voters, including voters who vote for the other side, as “neighbors.” He reminds audiences that people drawn to American fascism are known to him — part of his family and friend circle and communities.
This is interesting, and revealing — and different from how many Democrats speak, and perhaps even different from what may be true for many Democrats. Because those succumbing to the allure of the right are his “neighbors,” Walz can speak to them as people who have lost their way rather than people who are evil. He has been clear about his “weird” label applying to leaders on the right, not followers.
As a white guy for pluralism who personally knows and cares about white people and men who are not for that future, at least not now, he offers a reminder to Democrats of the need to be forceful in defense of pluralism and, simultaneously, magnanimous about the journey it will take some Americans to get there. For millions, he might be a bridge to somewhere.
Tim Walz, simply by being who he is, robs a lot of Americans of their excuses. And he shows them who else they might be.
Photo by Alex Kormann/Star Tribune via Getty Images
This post was originally published on The.Ink.